Neoclassical Hellenism is a term introduced primarily during the European Romantic era by Johann Joachim Winckelmann.
Neoclassical Hellenism is a term introduced primarily during the European Romantic era by Johann Joachim Winckelmann.
As a neoclassical movement distinct from other Roman or Greco-Roman forms of neoclassicism emerging after the European Renaissance, it most often is associated with Germany and England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Germany, the preeminent figure in the movement was Winckelmann, the art historian and aesthetic theoretician who first articulated what would come to be the orthodoxies of the Greek ideal in sculpture (though he only examined Roman copies of Greek statues, and was murdered before setting foot in Greece). For Winckelmann, the essence of Greek art was noble simplicity and sedate grandeur, often encapsulated in sculptures representing moments of intense emotion or tribulation. Other major figures include Hegel, Schlegel, Schelling and Schiller.
In England, the so-called "second generation" Romantic poets, especially John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron are considered exemplars of Hellenism. Drawing from Winckelmann (either directly or derivatively), these poets frequently turned to Greece as a model of ideal beauty, transcendent philosophy, democratic politics, and homosociality or homosexuality (for Shelley especially). Women poets, such as Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were also deeply involved in retelling the myths of classical Greece. [1]
In the early nineteenth century, during the Greek War of Independence, many foreign parties--including prominent Englishmen such as Lord Byron--offered zealous support for the Greek cause. This particular brand of Hellenism, pertaining to modern rather than ancient Greece, has come to be called philhellenism. Byron was perhaps the best-known philhellene; he died in Missolonghi while preparing to fight for the Greeks against the Ottoman Turks. Books like 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' feature this new Hellenism in terms of aesthetic appreciation.
In art and architecture, the Greek influence saw a zenith in the early nineteenth century, following from a Greek Revival that began with archaeological discoveries in the eighteenth century, and that changed the look of buildings, gardens and cemeteries (among other things) in England and continental Europe. This movement also inflected the worlds of fashion, interior design, furniture-making--even hairstyles. In painting and sculpture, no single event was more inspiring for the movement of Hellenism than the removal of the Parthenon Marbles from Greece to England by Lord Elgin. The English government purchased the Marbles from Elgin in 1816 and placed them in the British Museum, where they were seen by generations of English artists. Elgin's activities caused a controversy that continues to this day. [2]
The Victorian period saw new forms of Hellenism, none more famous than the social theory of Matthew Arnold in his book, Culture and Anarchy (published as a book in 1869). For Arnold, Hellenism was the opposite of Hebraism. The former term stood for "spontaneity," and for "things as they really are"; the latter term stood for "strictness of conscience," and for "conduct and obedience." Human history, according to Arnold, oscillated between these two modes. [3] Other major figures include Swinburne, Pater, Wilde, and Symonds. [4]
Rosewater Hellenism was the opprobrious term applied in the late 19th century to an over-idealised form of neoclassical writing. [5] The bland Arcadia such writings presented was echoed pictorially in the art of Puvis de Chavannes, who in turn influenced the early Picasso of the Blue Period. [6]
Twentieth century instances of Rosewater Hellenism include some of the lesser poems of Cavafy, [7] as well as the blander nudes of Willem de Kooning. [8]
"Ozymandias" is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). It was first published in the 11 January 1818 issue of The Examiner of London. The poem was included the following year in Shelley's collection Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems, and in a posthumous compilation of his poems published in 1826.
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century; in most areas it was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism, clandestine literature, paganism, idealization of nature, suspicion of science and industrialization, as well as glorification of the past with a strong preference for the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, but also the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music and literature; it had a major impact on historiography, education, chess, social sciences and the natural sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing conservatism, liberalism, radicalism and nationalism.
The Elgin Marbles are a collection of Ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and other structures from the Acropolis of Athens, removed from Ottoman Greece to Britain by agents of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, and now held in the British Museum. The majority of the sculptures were created in the 5th century BCE under the direction of sculptor and architect Phidias.
Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century, and lasted approximately from 1800 to 1850. Romantic poets rebelled against the style of poetry from the eighteenth century which was based around epics, odes, satires, elegies, epistles and songs.
Philhellenism was an intellectual movement prominent mostly at the turn of the 19th century. It contributed to the sentiments that led Europeans such as Lord Byron and Charles Nicolas Fabvier to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.
Greek love is a term originally used by classicists to describe the primarily homoerotic customs, practices, and attitudes of the ancient Greeks. It was frequently used as a euphemism for both homosexuality and pederasty. The phrase is a product of the enormous impact of the reception of classical Greek culture on historical attitudes toward sexuality, and its influence on art and various intellectual movements.
'Greece' as the historical memory of a treasured past was romanticised and idealised as a time and a culture when love between males was not only tolerated but actually encouraged, and expressed as the high ideal of same-sex camaraderie. ... If tolerance and approval of male homosexuality had happened once—and in a culture so much admired and imitated by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—might it not be possible to replicate in modernity the antique homeland of the non-heteronormative?
Jerome John McGann is an American academic and textual scholar whose work focuses on the history of literature and culture from the late eighteenth century to the present.
With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance, the poetry of Ovid became a major influence on the imagination of poets and artists, and remained a fundamental influence on the diffusion and perception of classical mythology through subsequent centuries. From the early years of the Renaissance, artists portrayed subjects from Greek and Roman mythology alongside more conventional Christian themes. Among the best-known subjects of Italian artists are Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Pallas and the Centaur, the Ledas of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and Raphael's Galatea. Through the medium of Latin and the works of Ovid, Greek myth influenced medieval and Renaissance poets such as Petrarch, Boccaccio and Dante in Italy.
Greek–British relations are foreign relations between Greece and the United Kingdom. Greece and the United Kingdom maintain excellent and cordial bilateral relations and consider each other an ally with the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, paying an official visit to London in 2021. Greece and the United Kingdom are both members of the United Nations, NATO and the Council of Europe. The United Kingdom is also viewed very favorably in Greece. According to a global opinion poll, 77% of Greeks view the United Kingdom favourably, while only 10% don't. The British have a very positive opinion of Greece as well. 66% of the British view Greece positively, while only 3% view it negatively, making Greece one of the most liked countries in the UK.
"England in 1819" is a political sonnet by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley which reflects his liberal ideals.
"A Defence of Poetry" is an essay by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, written in 1821 and first published posthumously in 1840 in Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments by Edward Moxon in London. It contains Shelley's famous claim that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world".
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the greatest of English poets. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narratives Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; many of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular.
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. The English language has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century, are called Old English. Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English, and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in Scandinavia. However, following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. The English spoken after the Normans came is known as Middle English. This form of English lasted until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard, a London-based form of English, became widespread. Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, was a significant figure in the development of the legitimacy of vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 also helped to standardise the language, as did the King James Bible (1611), and the Great Vowel Shift.
Susan J. Wolfson is Professor of English at Princeton University. She received her PhD from University of California, Berkeley and, previous to Princeton, taught for thirteen years at Rutgers University New Brunswick. Wolfson's recent books include Frankenstein: Longman Cultural Edition (2007). Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in English Romanticism and The Questioning Presence: Wordsworth, Keats, and the Interrogative Mode in Romantic Poetry ; two editions, Lord Byron: Selected Poems, co-edited with Peter Manning, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, coedited with Barry V. Qualls, and scholarship on William Blake, S.T. Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Lamb, Lord Byron, John Keats, Felicia Hemans, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, various topics on British Romanticism.
Opium and Romanticism are well-connected subjects, as readers of Romantic poetry often come into contact with literary criticisms about the influence of opium on its works. The idea that opium has had a direct effect on works of romantic poetry is still under debate; however, the literary criticism that has emerged throughout the years suggests very compelling ideas about opium and its impact on Romantic texts. Usually these criticisms tend to focus on poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey and George Crabbe.
The sonnet was a popular form of poetry during the Romantic period: William Wordsworth wrote 523, John Keats 67, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 48, and Percy Bysshe Shelley 18. But in the opinion of Lord Byron sonnets were “the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions”, at least as a vehicle for love poetry, and he wrote no more than five.
Noah Comet is a professor of English literature at the United States Naval Academy. He specializes in Nineteenth Century British Literature. He is known for his book called Romantic Hellenism and Women Writers from Macmillan and several scholarly articles, among them essays in The Wordsworth Circle and the Keats-Shelley Journal on poets Letitia Landon and Felicia Hemans, and articles on John Keats and Lord Byron, including a 2016 essay on Byron's influence on early explorations of Yellowstone. He has also written essays on nature and ecotourism for The New York Times, The Denver Post, and The Baltimore Sun.
Elizabeth Kent ('Bessy') (1791–1861) was a nineteenth century British writer on botanical and horticultural matters.
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Scholars regard the publishing of William Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in 1798 as probably the beginning of the movement, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end. Romanticism arrived in other parts of the English-speaking world later; in the United States, it arrived around 1820.
Yopie Prins is Irene Butter Collegiate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. Her research includes classical reception, comparative literature, historical poetics, lyric theory, translation studies, Nineteenth-Century poetry, English Hellenism, and Victorian poetry.